Hirschfeld Home Where Nina Played Is for Sale

The Upper East Side townhouse where the artist Al Hirschfeld created his distinctive caricatures of theater luminaries for more than half a century has gone on the market for $5.3 million.

 

Mr. Hirschfeld died in 2003 at the age of 99. He had worked in his studio at the townhouse, located at 122 E. 95th St., until his death.

 

The drawing table and barber chair Mr. Hirschfeld used for his pen-and-ink drawings have been donated to the New York Public Library. But the house where he had lived since the 1940s is still filled with his work, as well as some unexpected touches.

 

Though Mr. Hirschfeld worked in black and white, the building is suffused with color, beginning with its brick Queen Anne facade that is painted pink. The 12-foot-high ceiling in the living room is painted a bright orange, to match the orange carpeting. The dining room on the garden level has a deep blue ceiling.

 

"He knew that I liked blue and green so he added a vibrant green to the third floor, along with a vibrant pink," says Louise Hirschfeld Cullman, a theater historian who married Mr. Hirschfeld in 1996.

 

She put the house on the market after she remarried in December to Lewis B. Cullman, the retired chief executive of "At-A-Glance," a calendar and appointment book company.

 

Ms. Cullman said that for a generation, the house had been something of a literary and theatrical salon, where Marlene Dietrich would stop by and Laurence Olivier and Lillian Hellman would appear at Mr. Hirschfeld's annual New Year's bash.

 

 "What do you say when Lillian Gish shows up and sits down at the table," she asks.

 

Mr. Hirschfeld bought the house in 1947 and moved in the following year after an extensive renovation. He was married at the time to actress Dolly Haas. His daughter, Nina, whose name is hidden at least once in most of Mr. Hirschfeld's drawings, was a toddler. Ms. Hass died in 1994.

 

Nina Hirschfeld West, now a grandmother in Austin, Texas, said Wednesday that she remembers the house fondly.

 

"It was the greatest house in Manhattan," she said. "I would love to see it again before it's sold."

 

Mr. Hirschfeld told interviewers that the success of a book he created with S.J. Perelman, "Westward Ha! Or Around the World in 80 Clichés" enabled him to pay for the house. He typically took notes and made quick sketches at the theater, and then produced finished drawings back at home.

 

When Mr. Hirschfeld bought the home, it was used to house workmen at a nearby brewery, Ms. Cullman says. Mr. Hirschfeld rebuilt the interior and modified the facade to create an oversize picture window for his north-facing studio.

 

When the block was included in an expanded Carnegie Hill Historic District in 1993, the Landmarks Commission noted that Mr. Hirschfeld had altered the facade—which dated back to the 1880s—removing the front stoop.

 

Anne Snee, a broker at Corcoran Group who has the listing, along with Rhea F. Stein, says that the asking price on the 20-foot-wide townhouse was comparable with other single-family homes  on the tree-lined townhouse block, but priced below similar houses closer to Fifth Avenue and Central Park.

 

The sale will include large panels of vintage Italian wallpaper dating to the 1950s of some of Mr. Hirschfeld's notable caricatures.

 

The house is 4,160 square feet, and has a master bedroom with a balcony overlooking the garden. The kitchen is well laid out but needs work, she says. The old light-filled studio where Mr. Hirschfeld worked is located on the fourth floor.

 

The house has no elevator, and Mr. Hirschfeld told interviewers that the only exercise he got was scampering up the stairs to the studio "like a goat."

 

In later years, he had a chair lift installed, but still chose to walk up the last flight, Ms. Cullen says.